Velfærdsprofessioner i omsorgskrisens skygge

Abstract

Welfare professions in the shadow of the care crisis
The care crisis is currently considered one of the major challenges facing the welfare society, but it is most often perceived as a recruitment crisis. This perspective tends to overlook some of the more fundamental problems related to working life in the welfare state – problems that have not been resolved by ongoing waves of reform. Over the past 20 years, Tidsskrift for Arbejdsliv has published articles and special issues that specifically address how welfare state reforms have transformed the working lives of professionals. The ambition of this article is to use these insights to provide a deeper understanding of the complex changes that have occurred in the professionals’ working life. The article is structured around four different reform and governance logics that have shaped developments over the past many years. Our analytical review is based on contributions in Tidsskrift for Arbejdsliv that are particularly helpful in illuminating the transformation of professional working life. However, we also include other literature that contributes to understanding this development. We show how, through various reforms, professionals are made accountable in different and often contradictory ways within an increasingly complex governance landscape, while their conditions for assuming this responsibility have been severely limited and framed in ways that do not always align with professional ethics. Finally, we discuss how working life research can contribute relevant perspectives to the highly topical care crisis.